She shows up dirty, raggedy. Comes close, smells a foul taste, whispers in both my ears at once.

“You don’t have enough. You’re going to run out.”

Her words land as a cold stone in my stomach.

I refute her. “My financial advisor and I have a plan that takes me safely to 97.”

She is unmoved by logic.

I grab my phone and put on a meditation that asks me to put my left hand on my heart. My palm feels a pounding beat, where usually I feel nothing at all.

In the morning she is gone, maybe sleeping under the bed, maybe awake and crouching. I dress and leave quickly, distract myself with the day.

That night, she returns. My first attempt is an affirmation. “I have enough. I have always had enough (even that time in college when I had to make $21 last two weeks). I will always have enough.” She snickers.

Maybe Julian of Norwich’s words will work better. “All is well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well.” She rolls her eyes.

I look at her, this bag lady fear I have run from my entire life. Maybe I should speak to her the way Internal Family Systems therapy has taught me to speak to my parts. Maybe she is not an adversary. Maybe she is a part.

“Hey.”

She says nothing, eyes me warily. I recognize her dress. It’s like the one I wore at Arthur Andersen, but instead of corporate cloth it is closer to burlap, muddy brown instead of midnight blue. The wide leather belt is missing.

I ask her to sit by me and she does, her eyes like knives. “You’re going to go broke. You need to go get a job.”

Instead of panicked, I feel an unlikely calm. “You can’t predict the future. Neither can I.”

That’s when I really see her. Not the clothes or the dirt on her face, but the face, the hair.

“You’re supposed to be me, at some point in the unknown future when I’m a bag lady, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, I can tell you one thing you got wrong about your prediction.”

“What’s that.”

She has a snotty tone, like a teenager.

“If you’re me in the future, you’ve got the hair wrong. You need a lot less.”

She breaks eye contact, stretches the back of her neck to think.

“You’re wearing your hair like I did in eighth grade, parted on the side, slicked-down-with-Dippity-Do-failing-to-stay-straight-sticking-out-like-Bozo’s-except- brown-instead-of-red. “

Maybe the bag lady fear is me at thirteen, the age I first started earning money ($0.50/hour), saving up to buy jeans ($8.50), and a Meet the Monkees record ($5), and a 10-speed orange Schwinn bicycle ($117).

I talk to her the way I would speak to a thirteen-year-old who feels like she’s pretty much alone and must look out for herself. I tell her she’s not alone, she’s got me. I explain that working a job that pays by the hour isn’t the only way to have income. Being thirteen, she doesn’t know this. I tell her it’s my job to take care of her, make sure she has what she needs, not hers to take care of me.

I don’t know what else I said to her because I fell asleep.

She hasn’t come back since, but if she does, I’ll know how to talk to her, what to say.

I will tell her I love her.

Chewing the Cud of Good

Thankful for the color and crunch and swirl of autumn leaves.